News & Commentary

It was a veto session and while the timing may have been right, Mary E. Dixon wasn't convinced the bill to repeal the state's death penalty was going to survive. "I was probably one of the naysayers of the group," the longtime legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said of the coalition that pushed the repeal. "It was difficult for me to believe that [lawmakers would] do the right thing on this because of the difficulty, in part, politically of such a vote." Dixon, howev

Four years before Illinois passed the Illinois Civil Union Act, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU), with contributions from Lambda Legal staff, drafted a civil union bill. As this civil union bill made its way through the Illinois Senate and House, the ACLU supplemented its lobby force of two staff lobbyists by hiring contract lobbyists. Polling on the question of people's support for civil unions was also paid for by the ACLU. As 2010 neared, the ACLU paid for patch-through calls from citizens to legislators and organized voter visits to legislative offices that were in swing districts because the ACLU wanted to make sure to counter the belief of some legislators that they did not have constituents in their districts interested in this legislation. The ACLU mobilized its 22,000 Illinois members through online Action Alerts about the legislation while working with other coalition members to successfully make Illinois one of the 13 states to provide protections and rights, as well as obligations, under the civil union law. On June 1, 2011, the Illinois Civil Union Act goes into effect. Illinois’ extension of the right of equality and fairness to lesbian and gay couples through the Civil Union Act is complicated by the differences in the details of Illinois' state laws, which now apply to same-sex couples regardless of whether or not they have entered into a civil union. This article discusses the details, and explains what a civil union is, and what we get from being unioned. I will also discuss my cautions a

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Benjamin Wolf, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois who represents juvenile state wards as part of a court-monitored consent decree with DCFS, said the decision was troubling, especially in Rockford where there is a high turnover of child welfare workers and racial and economic tensions. ... "I am very sorry that they would give a greater priority to their commitment to continue discriminating than the health and welfare of Illinois children." Wolf said that when Catholic Charities in Chicago ended its foster care services in 2007 because the agency's insurer dropped its co

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